Well, That Plan's Been Shot To Hell
by Lucillia
Summary: A good friend will help you move. Your Best Friend will help you turn your new home into a death trap for Voldemort.


_"Well, hello, Peter," said Lupin pleasantly, as though rats frequently erupted into old school friends around him. "Long time, no see."_

_"S-Sirius...R-Remus..."Even Pettigrew's voice was squeaky. Again, his eyes darted toward the door. "My friends, my old friends..."_

_Black's wand arm rose, but Lupin seized him around the wrist, gave him a warning look, then..._

"I'm sorry, but the plan got completely shot to shit and I've been forced to improvise. I hate improvising." Pettigrew continued, his voice growing firmer as he got the hang of speaking once more. "Pads should never have gone to prison. I mean seriously, who sends a member of an ancient pureblood family to prison without a trial?!"

"Wha...?" Sirius said rather eloquently.

"The street was a bit of an accident, shouldn't have used a cracked wand even in a fake duel, but they should've found you innocent of that at trial." Pettigrew continued, wincing at a memory as he mentioned the street.

"Wha...? Wha...? Bu..." Sirius said, looking completely lost.

"You betrayed James and Lily!" Sirius yelled a moment later, now back on firmer ground.

"No I didn't!" Pettigrew yelled. "It was James' plan all along!"

"Wait, what?" Remus yelled, finally losing his composure.

"James and Lily knew that You-Know-Who would pursue them to the ends of the earth until the day they died," Pettigrew said sadly. "Knowing them, do you really think they'd cower in their home for the rest of their lives, especially when there's a war on and they could do something about it?"

"But, what about Harry?" Remus asked.

"They knew they weren't getting out alive, and they knew we would take care of him." Peter replied.

"But, but, you're a Death Eater!" said Sirius who was finally beginning to process what was going on.

"How the hell do you think James caught You-Know-Who flatfooted so often?" Peter said. "James didn't tell Dumbledore in case the old man went and blabbed it at an Order meeting and alerted all the other spies."

"So, the plan was...?" Remus asked.

"James and Lily turn the house into a death trap, taking You-Know-Who out with a bomb planted in the nursery while Harry sits safe and snug in his specially warded crib. I temporarily make myself look innocent by telling everyone you betrayed Lily and James in order to get time to get the cache of money and supplies James hid for me. You go to trial and are found innocent while I run to a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with Britain. I lay low until everything cools down, sniff out the other Death Eaters who escaped prosecution, convince them that I had absolutely no idea that James and Lily would do that, re-enter their circle, and take them out one by one." Peter replied.

"Yeah, that plan definitely got shot to shit." Sirius said, wincing at the destruction of James' masterwork.

"Tell me about it." Peter said. "Nobody expected Harry to actually be hit with a Killing Curse, much less survive it. I had to go in and reconnect the explosives while You-Know-Who was gloating. Still, his er, almost death was absolutely hilarious and worthy of being called a Marauder prank."

"Really? Do tell..." Remus said, his eyes lighting up in a way they hadn't since he was Twenty-one.

"Flash of green, 'nother flash of green, a yell of 'SHIT!', then BOOM!" Peter replied with a smirk.

Sirius gave a barklike laugh at that, his first in a while.

"So, what now?" Remus asked, wondering where he and his remaining friends would go from there considering the fact that none of them had betrayed the others, and they couldn't just hand Peter over to be sent to Azkaban or worse, be kissed by Dementors.

"Dumbledore's been plotting again." Peter said glumly.

Both Sirius and Remus winced. Dumbledore's juvenile schemes to defeat Evil and bring about World Peace always went to hell unless someone was around to fix them. It used to be Moody who had that unfortunate position, but the old man had lost one too many body parts and finally called it quits.

"I figured I'd supervise and do a bit of work in the background to make sure the world doesn't blow up." Peter replied.

"Good luck mate." Sirius said, remembering Dumbledore's plan to bring America and the U.S.S.R. into the fight against Voldemort which had nearly ended in a nuclear holocaust.

"So, how are we going to play this?" Remus asked, nodding towards the kiddies who were sitting there looking utterly gobsmacked.

"Seeing as I'm going to be working things from the You-Know-Who end, I say we obliviate the kiddies, make me out to be the baddie, and have me slip the noose when Moony transforms and goes "Berserk"." Peter said.

**Four Years Later In the Afterlife:**

"Well, that went surprisingly well for one of Dumbledore's plans." Peter said when he found his friends.

"You killed me!" Cedric Diggory who'd been following him around for the last hour harping on that point said.

Peter, who'd explained all about war and collateral damage and how he was sorry about that but it all worked out in the end since Cedric had gotten to meet his ancestors and the world was still spinning despite the fact that Dumbledore had been plotting for a decade straight the first time Cedric Diggory had confronted him with that fact, ignored the boy.

"Hey, is that Snivellous?" Sirius asked as he pointed to a black lump lying some distance away.

"I do believe it is." James said with a smirk.

"Let's go say hi." Peter said with that eager look that caused people to dismiss him as a mere hanger-on despite the fact that he was the plotter more often than not, being the group's designated Slytherindor. How people had managed to write him off as useless despite the fact that he'd gotten all EEs and Os on his N.E.W.T.S., he didn't know.

The four headed over to the prone form of Severus Snape while Lily groaned and buried her face in her hands.

"Oh God, you're here!" Snape exclaimed before groaning "I need a drink!"

"Have one on us old chum. In fact, have several." James said with a smile as he offered a bottle that appeared out of nowhere. "I promised Lily that I wouldn't prank you when you arrived ages ago."

Looking mistrustfully at the proffered bottle, Snape slowly took it, opened it, sniffed its contents, dropped the contents of a vial that appeared out of nowhere into it, and took a swig when the color failed to change. After the first swig, he took another and another until the bottle was empty and so too was the next and the next.

"You know, you guysh aren' tha' bad...Hey! Ish tha' tha' Dum'dor shaped toilet?" Snape said as he blearily looked up at the Marauders and then over their shoulders.

Unsteadily getting up to his feet, Snape drunkenly weaved off in the direction of the object he'd spotted behind the Marauders.

"I never said I wouldn't use Snivellous in a prank though." James said with a wicked grin as he watched Snape wobble away.

"AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"You'd think the Headmaster would've learned to dodge considering the number of times that's happened." Remus said.

"This place is great!" Peter said as he watched the show. "My friends are here, everything I want is here, and..."

"So are me and the twelve people you blew up." Cedric who was at the head of a small mob said.

"Oh shit."


End file.
